The Host

Today's Special: Cheetos (for Wanderer) or a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream (for Ian). And some strong coffee for those late-night readers, like me.

Stephenie Meyer's latest (and first non-Twilight) book is AMAZING. Very few books grip me strongly enough to keep me reading late into the night. In fact, I can narrow that category down to the Harry Potter series and a few select other stories. Into that pantheon I now add The Host, an electric, insightful, imaginative, and profoundly moving book that kept me reading until 4:30 am and left me sobbing through the last chapters.
The story centers around Wanderer, a member of an alien race that is colonizing Earth by taking over the bodies of the planet's human inhabitants. In most cases, the human consciousness disappears; however, Wanderer's host, a young woman named Melanie, will not give up. Melanie's love for her boyfriend and her brother overwhelms Wanderer and leads her to join them and their community of renegade humans hiding in an underground cave system.
The novel beautifully explores the ideas of love, humanity, and belonging in a way that feels new and fresh. Love is what keeps Melanie fighting. Love is what creates an unbreakable bond between Wanderer and Earth, giving her a sense of belonging she has had nowhere else. And Wanderer comes to understand that love is inexplicable, powerful, and most rewarding when it must be fought for. The Host also examines war and the possibility of understanding between enemies in a very natural, realistic way that feels neither preachy nor overly optimistic. For me, the relationship between Wanderer and Melanie was one of the best parts of the book. The two begin as enemies, but they develop a grudging alliance that becomes, over time, a bond of sisterhood. I think their relationship holds the idea of hope: if we can understand each other, really understand, maybe we will see that there is not as much to fear in the "enemy" as we thought - that the differences are not as big or important as we believed.